The city of Wichita has more market segments than most cities three times our size. This has made targeted messaging about the library difficult to achieve. Using NextDoor, the library has extended our reach into specific neighborhoods, letting us engage with citizens in new ways. For example, we struggled to gain participants for focus groups on branches. After using NextDoor, we obtained more than 1,800 comments to the same questions in a matter of days.

The results of the branch study have provided insights into how each library location can best serve its part of the community. By better aligning programs and services with neighborhood interests and needs, and then promoting those opportunities at the neighborhood level via NextDoor, we are improving connections between branch libraries and the areas they serve and increasing the visibility of the library in ways that we have not achieved through other social media platforms.

Using NextDoor to promote a gardening series to residents living near a branch, programs attracted larger audiences that the branch or the presenters had recently experienced. Previous non-library users have been attracted to events such as health screenings, voter registration drives and money management courses. By ensuring the activities are relevant to the neighborhoods, new users are arriving and branches and the library as a whole are being seen as more relevant to our community.